The overall purpose of the proposed studies is to use sensitive techniques for the analysis of behavioral change after years of alcohol abuse, in an attempt to understand the full extent of neuropsychological deficits and intact skills. The specific areas to be explored involve (a) information processing measures of cerebral laterality, and (b) comparative neuropsychological measures of other cognitive abilities. There has been some suggestion of decreased right-hemisphere functioning in chronic alcoholics and in normal aging populations. Similarly, there is suggestive evidence that alcoholism may be responsible for accelerated aging. Because there appears to be a continuum of effects encompassing alcoholic Korsakoff (amnesic) patients and chronic alcoholics without clinical signs of memory impairments, and because the relationship of alcohol abuse to premature aging is questionable, the proposed studies of cerebral laterality will attempt to provide answers to the following questions: Where in the chain from raw sensation to stimulus categorization and storage do the cerebral hemispheres normally diverge in their processing abilities? Are these processing abilities or hemispheric asymmetries differentially affected by long-term chronic alcoholism? By the presence or absence of clinical signs of Korsakoff's syndrome? Are any observed deficits more pronounced in older than in younger alcoholics with similar drinking histories? Another series of proposed studies will employ experimental paradigms known to be valid and reliable tests of nonhuman functional breakdown following brain damage. These tests include measures of selective attention, processing time, learning strategies, and memory for familiar stimuli, for stimulus-reward associations and for spatial or nonspatial cues. In all of the proposed studies, data obtained on alcoholic Korsakoff patients and on non-Korsakoff alcoholics will be used to assess the possibility of a continuum of impairments (which may interact with age). Data obtained from control patients with focal brain damage will provide valuable information about lateralized functions and cognitive abilities of these people, as well as comparisons for the effects of brain damage per se.